Teaching and Learning

The Coulter Faculty Commons exists to support a campus community centered on excellence in teaching and learning.  We provide a wide variety of services to support teaching and learning, including consultations, assessments, workshops, publications, and more.  These services are available to Western Carolina University faculty, staff, and graduate students.

Teaching and Learning Services

Consultation

All consultations and services are voluntary, confidential and are conducted with high professional standards. Consultation topics include, but are not limited to, the following or click here to Learn More

• Active learning
• Course analysis
• Course Design
• Civil Discourse in the Classroom
• Classroom Management
• Faculty time management
• Large classes (transitioning to, strategies for making large classes feel smaller)
• Online Teaching and Learning
• Rubric development and utilization
• Quality Matters
• Syllabus and schedule construction
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects
• Student Learning Outcome (SLO) writing and alignment
• Team-Based Learning (and other forms of problem-based learning designs)
• Test construction
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Consultations may also cover work-life balance and other issues related to faculty support.  To request any of these services, please contact the Coulter Faculty Commons, or visit our offices in Hunter Library.

Assessment

The two main types of assessment at WCU are Course Assessment and Program Assessment. Course Assessment evaluates the effectiveness of instruction whereas Program Assessment evaluates if a program serves its intended purpose. Making better use of assessment data improves the value of any course or program in the following ways:

Academic Integrity Support

Honesty is an important part of the education process and needs to be maintained to make college worth more than a degree alone. WCU created the Academic Integrity Policy to uphold this standard, focusing on four main offenses that threaten the quality of student education:

1. Cheating – Using, or attempting to use, unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise.
2. Fabrication – Creating and/or falsifying information or citation in any academic exercise.
3. Plagiarism – Representing the words or ideas of someone else as one’s own in any academic exercise.
4. Self-plagiarism – Reusing work that you have already published or submitted for a class. It can involve re-submitting an entire paper, copying, paraphrasing passages from your previous work, or recycling old data.
5. Facilitation – Helping or attempting to help someone to commit a violation of the Academic Integrity Policy in any academic exercise (e.g. allowing another person to copy information during an examination).

Learn More About our Academic Integrity Support

Teaching Analysis Polls

The Teaching Analysis Poll (TAP) is a method used to gather feedback about teaching and student behavior in order to help instructors improve their techniques and offer better educational experiences. This exercise provides the instructor with constructive feedback from students by keeping the suggestions anonymous and encouraging free communication by eliminating the pressure of direct confrontation.

Beginning Fall 2021, the Teaching Analysis Poll, or TAP, is offered exclusively to first-year faculty.

Five Simple Steps to Complete:

1. New full-time Instructors submit a request to schedule a date and time with an Educational Developer in the Faculty Commons.
2. The Instructor and Educational Developer member may meet to determine the purpose of the TAP.
3. The Educational Developer attends arranged class period and takes 30 minutes without the instructor present to obtain student feedback.
4. The Faculty Commons staff member formulates the summaries into a report explaining the student feedback.
5. The CFC staff member and the Instructor have a final consultation discussing the report and possible next steps.

Advantages to benefit long-term improvement:

• The anonymous nature makes students more comfortable sharing their feedback.
• The student feedback tells instructors which elements of their teaching methods are effective or could be more effective.
• Research indicates this method is highly effective (Hurney, C., Harris, N., Bates Prins, S., & Kruck, S. E. (2014). The Impact of a Learner-Centered, Mid-Semester Course Evaluation on Students. The Journal of Faculty Development, 28(3), 55-62.

Additional Resources

Syllabus

Trying to write your syllabus? Explore our tools and templates to help you fulfill all the elements needed. Syllabus Resources

Other Resources

Other Publications and Resources